This is a continuation-in-part of application Ser. No. 103,517 filed Oct. 1, 1987.
This invention relates to a pre-treatment method of raw cotton.
For the spinning of fibers other than cotton such as wool, chemical fibers and synthetic fibers, a lubricant of some sort is generally used in order to improve their characteristics. For cotton spinning, by contrast, lubricants are usually not used because cotton by nature is basically suited for spinning in terms, for example, of cotton wax, fiber shapes, fiber lengths, fineness, and fiber hygroscopicity. With the increase in the speed and size of the spinning machines in recent years, however, characteristics of synthetic fibers regarding spinning have significantly improved. For cotton spinning, too, it is coming to be considered insufficient to depend merely on the natural characteristics of cotton and it is desirable to further improve spinning characteristics by applying an appropriate treatment agent prior to the spinning. The present invention, therefore, relates to a method of pre-treatment of raw cotton which can respond to such requirements.
In cotton spinning mills or ginning factories, some treatment agents such as dust control agents based on a mineral oil with low viscosity and cationic surface active agents for dust reduction have been studied. Improvement of productivity in gin factories and inorganic agents of a certain kind for increasing friction to improve yarn strength and spinning characteristics have also been studied. These agents, however, generally do not improve the spinning characteristics of cotton partially because they are primarily for different purposes.
A particular problem in cotton spinning is its tendency to become wrapped around rollers. Although this tendency is greatly influenced by many characteristics of raw cotton, it is particularly a problem with raw cotton with a large quantity of honeydew. As means for improving the processability of raw cotton, washing and corona discharge methods have been reported but they cannot sufficiently prevent raw cotton from becoming wrapped around the rollers and there is yet to be discovered an effective method against this problem. The methods which are currently being used in cotton spinning factories hardly go beyond reducing the temperature and humidity of the environment, or in the case of raw cotton with a large quantity of honeydew, mixing it with raw cotton with little honeydew and spinning them together. The recent requirements to significantly improve the spinning characteristics of cotton cannot be satisfied by such processes and the cost of energy in the operation increases inevitably if temperature and humidity must be reduced.